In a world of fleeting attention spans and oversaturated markets, how can brands truly stand out and build loyalty that lasts—even when it comes to something as overlooked as board meetings?
Today, we’re joined by Allison Capaldi, Senior Content Manager at Zeck, and Robert Wolfe, Founder of Zeck. Together, they’ve built not one but three successful brands, including Moosejaw, which sold to Walmart, and CrowdRise, which sold to GoFundMe. Now, they’re revolutionizing the way companies approach board meetings with Zeck, while continuing to push the boundaries of what it means to build a memorable and lasting brand. Allison will share her innovative “Layer Cake Approach” to branding, and we’ll hear from both Allison and Robert about their unique partnership and insights on building iconic brands.
About Allison Capaldi
Allison Capaldi started her passion for brand and brand building in 2002 when she was one of the first employees at Moosejaw Mountaineering, founded by Robert and Jeffrey Wolfe. From that moment on, the world of brand building was in her blood. From a small back office carved out of a retail store where they’d put customers on hold to say ‘hold on let us check in our warehouse’ (spoiler, there was no warehouse), to being acquired by Walmart and more recently, by Dick’s Sporting Goods, it was the maniacal pressing of the brand that made it all work.An irreverent sense of humor, a fanatical approach to customer service and a cult following around the globe helped to create a brand full of authenticity well before that was a buzzword. Following the Wolfe brother’s next endeavor (along with award-winning actor Edward Norton), Allison landed at CrowdRise, which eventually became the largest fundraising platform for non-profits in the United States. Kind of cool. Making giving back notable, cool and fun was the goal and it worked. CrowdRise was eventually acquired by GoFundMe. Fast-forward to business number three of Robert, Jeffrey and Edward and Zeck was born. Out of real life experience of now having sat on multiple boards and dealing with multiple boards, everyone realized there was a real problem. First of all, board meetings were miserable – we’re solving that. The brand is right back to taking center stage on a problem that is extremely corporate and lackluster. And, it’s working again.
Allison calls her branding approach the Layer Cake Approach and can talk about it until she’s blue in the face. It’s not about creating a brand that looks good and says the right thing – it’s about the layers. The details. The miniscule fine print on the receipt that actually is engaging – and for the 2% of people who read it, they’re yours forever. A graduate from the University of Michigan, Go Blue, she’s devoted her working life to these brands. She’s also a decent singer, brings her own hot sauce to her sister-in-law’s house and can’t go to bed unless the kitchen is clean. That’s all.
About Robert Wolfe
Robert Wolfe is the founder and former CEO of Moosejaw and CrowdRise. More recently, Robert started Zeck. Zeck is entirely reimagining the miserable board meeting process Robert started Moosejaw in a tiny shop when he had really big hair. Moosejaw’s aim was to make retail and e-commerce fun and engaging and they also pressed their own Moosejaw brand, which became pretty cultish, in a good way. Despite being incredibly foolish, Moosejaw was acquired by Walmart. No one can believe it but it’s true. Robert wanted to make sure he had some sort of decent impact, so along with his smarter brother, Jeffrey, and actor and philanthropist, Edward Norton, he launched CrowdRise. CrowdRise focused on making giving back notable, cool and social. CrowdRise eventually became the largest fundraising platform four non-profits in the US and was acquired by GoFundMe. After spending time as an operator running board meetings and, on the other side of the table, as a board member, Robert launched Zeck to change the process entirely. Zeck transforms the dynamic between the leadership team and the board, making board meetings strategic and forward thinking. Never again will you get into a board meeting to have a deck that you already read, read back to you. Such a waste of time. Robert has no interests or hobbies and is a terrible sleeper. He has been an advisor to several companies and is faster than Usain Bolt at replying to any message. But, publicly Robert only boasts about his Honorable Mention for ‘Best Breakdancer Using an Old School Cardboard Mat’. Also, ‘for’ is spelled incorrectly above on purpose.
Resources
Zeck website: https://www.zeck.com
The B2B Agility podcast website: https://www.b2bagility.com
Sign up for The Agile Brand newsletter here: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com
Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/b2b-agility/
Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com
Transcript
Note: This was AI-generated and only lightly edited
Greg Kihlstrom:
In a world of fleeting attention spans and over-saturated markets, how can brands truly stand out and build loyalty that lasts, even when it comes to something as overlooked as board meetings? Today we’re joined by Allison Capaldi, Senior Content Manager, and Robert Wolfe, Founder of Zeck. Together, they’ve built not one, but three successful brands, including Moose Jaw, which sold to Walmart, and CrowdRise, which sold to GoFundMe. And now they’re revolutionizing the ways companies approach board meetings with Zeck, while continuing to push the boundaries of what it means to build a memorable and lasting brand. Welcome to the show, Allison and Robert.
Robert Wolfe: Hey, thank you.
Greg Kihlstrom: Thank you. Yeah, looking forward to talking about all this with you. Before we dive in though, why don’t you both share a little bit more about your backgrounds and what led you to launch Zeck?
Allison Capaldi: I have worked with Robert for many, many moons now. I think 2002 is when we started working together at Moose Jaw in a corner, little tiny office baked into a retail space where we decided to try to make everything about backpacking, climbing, Out being outdoors, fun and, and not just a serious, you know, going on a hiking trip. It was more about fun. And we grew that. And then that got sold, like you said, and then crowd rise was started for a long, longer story. I don’t know how, if we have time for, but I jumped on the bandwagon with that one as well. And we made giving back less miserable and sad as a way. And it worked. And then now Zeck is here to revolutionize the way people think about board meetings and how terrible they are. So that’s the very short version. But Robert’s the founder, so.
Robert Wolfe: I think sort of the through line from the three companies really is brand. And for us, we have found ourselves in spaces that are seemingly miserable. So I’m not sure how familiar you are with backpackers and climbers, but they take themselves very seriously. And at MooseJail, we had a different take on that. And we were really foolish and crazy. And we could tell you about some of the notable campaigns we did that so many of you couldn’t do today. We were quite polarizing. And then CrowdRise, if you think about the giving space in 2010, it was actually tactless to tell people how you give back. No one did that. And our idea was if we can figure out a way to make it fun, and people actually enjoyed giving back, then people would raise more money for the causes they cared about. And now you can’t scroll on social for more than 10 seconds without seeing how someone gives to cause. And then with Zeck, we sort of fell into this place where there is nothing more burdensome and painstaking than the board meeting for any company or nonprofit. So we thought, okay, if we can take some of the lessons that we learned at Moosejaw and CrowdRise and apply them to this new space and actually make board meetings more interesting and valuable and really eliminate the sort of natural antagonism between the leadership teams and the board, then then we will have done something special and notable. So that’s, that’s how we got into all of this.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, and I will confess, I’ve sat through a few board meetings that that could probably have served as inspiration for you. So yeah, the worst. So, um, and let’s let’s start there. So you know, it’s not board meetings are it’s one of those. necessary, you know, let’s call it eye roll kind of thing. Sometimes I’m sure, you know, great things have happened in some board meetings. But to your point, it’s it’s there’s a lot of wasted time and potential in them. And, you know, they’re not necessarily associated with innovation or branding or any of these things. So you touched a little bit on this, but, you know, what inspired you to focus there and revolutionize the space with Zeck?
Robert Wolfe: really from our own personal experience. So at both, I mean, at both Moosejaw and CrowdRise, we had real boards, right? So you mentioned Moosejaw was acquired by Walmart and at CrowdRise, we had these very famous board members, right? And Our team would spend 100 hours putting a bad presentation together. We would send it to the board. They couldn’t read it on their phone because you can’t read a slide deck on your phone. And the worst part was everyone would prepare for this grandiose board meeting and we get into the room and quite literally reread our board a deck that they had already read. We genuinely thought we were the only ones who were bad at it. It wasn’t until after our companies were acquired, and we sort of got out there in the world, did we realize this angst was universal. And so we sort of set down the path to try and solve it. When we launched I mean, the board meetings are very serious. Security is table stakes. And we thought, OK, we are in the business of creating really microsites. It’s a software for our customers. So we didn’t go down the path of making it fun or trying to brand it for Zeck from the get go because we thought it was too risky for these very serious meetings. It wasn’t until after we started having this rapport with customers that we thought, OK, we can start pressing this a little bit. And then Elle started last year, and that’s when we really, Elle owned it and took it to a new level. And again, to your point, board meetings are, is not something you think about as being fun. But if you go to our site, there’s a Wedding Crashers quote above the fold on the homepage, right? So again, the idea is, if people actually look forward to these meetings, they’ll be more productive.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and talk a little bit more about the the branding component here. You know, it’s to your point, slide decks for these meetings are, you know, pretty, pretty dry. And, you know, there’s some things that have to get reported on and there’s certainly requirements, but it doesn’t mean that it has to be. the typical, you know, dry PowerPoint or presentation or stuff like that. So how do you, how do you look at injecting brand into a board meeting and maybe unexpected ways?
Allison Capaldi: For both CrowdRise and Zeck, we are talking to our customers, our customers, in a certain way, but you’re going into your board meeting, you’re having your board meeting with your board, and you have to present a certain way. So we’re not talking to you within that board meeting. We’re talking to our customers and having this report with them leading up to their meeting. We’re helping them with how they should structure their meeting and maybe making it more conversational so that they are injecting brand into that meeting, but really we think about injecting brand into our relationships with our customers. So it might not be on the actual product. You’ll see it on our website when we’re trying to get you to choose Zeck as the product and helping you to realize we’re just normal people who really had a terrible experience with board meetings. and realize that everyone has a terrible experience with board meetings. So we’re just talking to you as normal people on that side of things. Once you get into the product, it’s your stats, it’s your data, it’s your problems and your wins and your next steps. But the rapport that we develop with our customers and how we talk about the angst of the board meeting on our website and our socials, every single customer interaction, that’s really to us where the brand kind of becomes more of this holistic vision. And I think sometimes people on B2B, they think that, you know, they can’t do that. Like it’s, it’s too serious and they have to stop and sell a serious product for a serious issue. And it’s like, we’re all just humans dealing with the similar pain points. So why not just attack it that way and be super transparent and how we hated board meetings. We bet you hate board meetings. Let’s talk about that misery together. But let’s also give you a kick-ass product that’s actually going to solve it. And that’s kind of how we attack.
Robert Wolfe: Can you talk about the cookies, though, as an example, tangible example of something that we do?
Allison Capaldi: So we decided we want to give our customers a little, you know, hooray. It’s your first board meeting using ZEC. So we wanted to send them cookies and the amount of conversations we had about what to send them. I can’t even explain it to you. Like it’s all I did for weeks was talk about cookies because we are so maniacal about it being something. that we can inject a brand into so that we’re not just sending flowers to their board meeting. We’re not just sending a cheese plate. We’re not just sending Jimmy Johns. Like we want it to reflect how we think of board meetings so that their board is seeing this like wider vision. So we decided to send cookies, but the cookies had to be custom. So I found this awesome bakery and we send a dozen cookies to many, many of our customers. And one of the cookies, for example, says, This cookie is to eat or throw at your least productive board member. That’s on the cookie. It’s a little notepad cookie that’s written, you know, or death to the board deck. And so it’s not just cookies that are chocolate chip. It is cookie. They are cookies that are injected with our brand. We find it really hard to not find a touch point that we can’t inject brand into when we’re dealing with our customers. Right. So there’s all these different layers to it.
Greg Kihlstrom: Well, yeah. And to, to follow on that. So you have what you call the, the layer cake approach to branding cake cookies. I’m getting hungry already, but can you talk a little bit about, you know, what, what does that mean? And, and you know, what, what is, what does that consist of?
Allison Capaldi: That’s just something I came up with because I’m trying to explain to people that a cake, you know, a cake can be sponge and frosting, sponge and frosting, and then you cover it. and it looks like a cake. But then another cake could be sponge and like a crunchy layer, a jam, a frosting, a different layer of a different flavor of sponge, a different frosting, decorations. And from the outside, they look like two similar cakes. But when you cut into them, there are so many layers. And I think that a lot of people get stuck with branding just being very one note and thinking that you have a fun logo, you say, a quirky thing instead of sincerely, you might say something like, have the best day, like in branding stops at this very vanilla and chocolate cake. I love baking shows. They relax me. So that’s why I think about it that way. But when you cut open an equally beautiful looking cake, it’s so much better when it’s layered with all these different touch points, which is cookies is like one of the layers, right? So it’s not, it’s just talking about That just to me explains the difference between kind of one note brand marketing and then a really like more holistic approach to marketing.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. And can you maybe give an example of how have you applied that? in some of the brands that you’ve worked on?
Allison Capaldi: Well, the layer that I think many people don’t think about might be we tend to do hidden movie quotes. We tend to do hidden trivia. And then if you get it, we might send you an invisible medallion just as an example, which is very expensive for us to send. We send these invisible medallions via email all the time. But those are things that you might be a CEO or someone who’s looking at Zeck and we’re talking to you. Within that communication, we’re throwing in a movie quote because you’re a human living your life at this job and we don’t want you to be miserable. So we try to inject a little fun and then you respond to us with the answer to the movie quote. We send you an invisible medallion and you just had a bright point in your day. that otherwise would have just been an email conversation with some random customer service agent. So that to us layering on the brand and every single interaction that we do. I mean, if you talk to Robert, Robert gives a cell phone out to every single customer. I mean, you can reach us at all times. I mean, we really, if you look at like our G2 reviews, for example, a theme that I see consistently is our customer service. And it’s not just like. We provided you great customer service. We provide you with. We ask you about your day. We want to know about you and develop a relationship so that when a new product feature drops or something new happens at Zach, we think of you. We actually reach out to you. Like that’s a layer too. It’s not just this cut and dry. Sort of brand marketing. Like we really want you to have a great experience with our product. And I think in all three of the companies that we’ve worked for, That is a huge through line as well. We’re not just in it because we’re selling a product. We truly, truly believe in our product and that’s no BS. I don’t know if I can say that.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. So I guess since you’ve both worked together at three companies, I would imagine there’s been plenty of learnings along the way. So in other words, the way that you’re approaching things at Zeck, not only did it inspire previous board meetings inspired this company, but how much have you been able to learn and apply from some of those past experiences and how did they shape a company like Zach? You want to take that or you want me to, Al?
Robert Wolfe: all you. So it’s a great question because so much of what we’ve done has really come from total chaos. But as we’ve grown, the chaos doesn’t work if you don’t have systems around it. So we are crazy about systems. And I think they get a bad rap because people think that that will create bureaucracy. It actually makes everyone’s job easier. So whether we’re doing branded posts on LinkedIn or communicating with our customers via Slack or via email, there is a system behind everything. And we have learned that the only way to make this kind of craziness effective is if you have some structure to it. So while it may appear like it’s totally random, we are actually following the roadmap. because it’s too hard to fly a plane if you don’t know where it’s going to land. So we actually have goals for all of this, and we measure it, and we grade everything, and then we go and repeat the A’s and the B’s, and very purposefully not repeat the C’s, D’s, and E’s. And it’s taken us a long time to develop those best practices, but I think it’s something that we’re actually pretty good at now.
Greg Kihlstrom: Well, and so how much of that you know, in your experience, do you kind of know going, you know, so, so going to Zeck from the previous two companies, how much of that was, okay, well, we’ve got to do this, this and this already, or how, you know, is it, does it start as pure chaos? Does it start with a little bit of chaos plus, okay, here’s, here’s what we’re bringing from the past or, and does it just, or are you just able to quickly organize because you’ve had, to successful past companies, you know?
Robert Wolfe: Yeah, you know, nothing is easy. I think I think it’s a little bit of everything. So we, we were, we wanted to make sure that we developed good systems from the get go, because it was we have very few regrets. But that’s, that’s one of them is, we were always trying to catch up. So we actually raised money pre product. in order to be able to more efficiently develop those systems. So we had Salesforce and HubSpot from the get-go, for example. But then as we grew and we started adding more of our brand, again, I mentioned this previously, but when we launched we really weren’t as we didn’t have the vision for being as crazy as we think we are today. And it was really driven by our customers. So as we started communicating with them, just more naturally, we realized, okay, this, we don’t have to take ourselves so seriously, even though we are in a very serious space. And that’s, that’s definitely resonated. But But again, as you grow, when there’s three people at the company, it’s fine, you don’t need them. When there’s 30, and then 300, you have to have those systems in place, or it just doesn’t work.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. Well, and how much I mean, the two of you have been working together, you know, at three different companies, how does you know, a lot of times in my experience, brand and stuff is kind of an afterthought. It’s like, let’s start a company, we have some good tech, and then let’s slap a logo on it. And kind of hope for the best or whatever. What does it feel like? Or how do you approach things knowing that it’s it seems at least from what you’re describing, the brand is part of the mix from day one, right? Is that is that safe to assume?
Robert Wolfe: Yeah, I think absolutely. I mean, we probably spent more time trying to figure out if the word Zeck would look good on a t shirt than any company in history. But I do think there’s sort of a spectrum. So while we didn’t launch with another, we have a almost famous quote on our homepage, right? That wasn’t live from day one. But when we talked to customers, the idea that call one had to be the top priority was it had to be joyous, right? There had to be joy on that call. because that’s the kind of relationship we want to have with our customers. We also recognize it doesn’t work for everyone. So our slogan at our prior company, CrowdRise, so you think about we were in the giving space, and our slogan was, if you don’t give back, no one will like you. And when we launched, literally, American Cancer Society laughed us out of the room, right? But three, four or five years later, when we became the platform for more of a college aged audience, American Cancer Society came to us and said, hey, our customer is graying, and we became their platform. And I think the same, that’s happened at Zach also.
Allison Capaldi: Yeah. Yeah. I also think that branding from the inside out, like Robert and I are, This is us. Every meeting is crazy. We get the giggles, the whole group does. We get the AI summaries. It’s talking about nonsense for half of it, most likely. We have Slack channels for contests internally. It’s not just a stick a pool table in a room, ping pong and get people lunch every now and then type of brand. It’s which I think is like the one cake is like ingrained in our culture that we are, that we are like this. And you said joyous. I’ve never heard you say joyous more joy. So that is a reflection. Our internal staff is naturally infected with the brand and therefore it makes it easier for the brand to then hit the customers because it’s not just this hollow brand internally either. So that’s just one other. one of the aspects of it that we take very seriously.
Greg Kihlstrom: Well, yeah, and I mean, it sounds like there’s there’s a lot of detail, you know, and to your point about the layer cake and just building a nuanced brand, let’s just say is there’s a lot of details in there. And maybe some of the trivia questions not everybody gets, but the ones that do it’s special to them, you know, kind of to reiterate what you were saying, how do you what would your advice be for those, you know, I’m sure there’s people listening to this and being like, I want I want that kind of brand. I’ve got to pay the bills and I’ve got to do this and that. How do you find time? How do you recommend that they… stay focused on some of those details. I mean, the business has got to make money. It’s got to have customers. The product’s got to be great. But how would you recommend that someone stays focused on some of those details that really make that nuanced brand?
Robert Wolfe: Yeah, I think if you’re not purposely deciding to prioritize it, it falls off the list. And I remember very specifically when we started When we started grading our email blasts at Moose Jaw, we did so based on the sales we were driving. And some of the campaigns that we did, they would never drive sales because they were just branding and they were insane. And as we graded those campaigns and they weren’t driving sales, we started taking them off the list. And that was a mistake. So we had, we had to figure out a different grading system, right? Because we knew we wanted to do that. So I just think if, if you’re not prioritizing it and not putting real systems around it and measuring it, usually end up to your point, Greg, prioritizing sales. And we’ve had the opposite approach. We know that, yes, our business can work if we pay for every sale, but it works a whole lot better if we’re notable enough that our customers are telling their friends about it. And so much of that is because of the branding, because they actually like building their board decks. And pre-Zeck, it was quite literally the most stressful part of their job. And I think that’s the kind of behavior that we’re changing.
Greg Kihlstrom: it. Well, Robert, Allison, thanks so much for joining today. Really appreciate it. One last question for both of you. I like to ask everybody, how do you stay agile in your respective roles and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Allison Capaldi: That’s a good one. I think that I’m lucky because I’m surrounded by people who feed into this every single day. So every day you go to work, like it is, I told Robert before this call, I’m like, we should’ve got on a five minute call beforehand because we feed off of each other and have a really great energy and keep that going. No, I think another thing is no question thought, like we just, the smallest, dumbest thing is okay. over here and we throw out every idea and you never feel like an idiot for throwing them out and creating a culture that allows that is key.
Robert Wolfe: Yeah, I think that the culture and the systems again, they encourage us to be agile. So we have the same five rules at all three of our companies. And again, I think the blend of those rules allow everyone to embrace the kind of chaos that we think contributes to the brand.
